


shadows in the night

by sangi



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-08
Updated: 2010-06-08
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3386780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sangi/pseuds/sangi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t play with fire,” he warns early on, “if you don’t want to get burned.” - 1sentence prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shadows in the night

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2010, posted here again for archival reasons.

1\. motion

 

The candles in the center of the room burn softly, flame flickering in the obscurity of the night; he watches her closed eyes, missing the golden brilliance - his own golden eyes follow the line of her arm as she pushes further into the sheets (he can see the burn on her left shoulder, and the long scar running from beneath her breast to her waist – his fingers trace them reverently).

 

2\. cool

 

Tea slides smoothly out of the pot as Ursa’s hands pour it; next to her Azulon watches, carefully examining, watching, and Ozai is in turn watching his father and is gauging his expression; Iroh takes a sip of his tea – it is lukewarm.

 

3\. young

 

The day his wife dies (she had never really recovered from her childbirth, the healer explains), Iroh is solely entrusted with the care of his son; a small hand reaches out to grab his finger, the baby gurgling, and he looks up to find a shadow in the doorway, a smile on his face.

 

4\. last

 

One night, Ursa does not come to his room – “A wife must do her duty,” she will say, with a bittersweet (farewell) kiss.

 

5\. wrong

 

The first time: “We shouldn’t do this,” she will breathe, in broken gasps, against his lips; he pulls back to look at her – her eyes gold and smoldering in the darkness, her lips swollen and red – and Iroh leans back in.

 

6\. gentle

 

He presses soft kisses on her scars, calloused fingertips brushing them delicately.

 

7\. one

 

When Iroh is in the Earth Kingdom, he sends Ursa letters recounting stories, mentioning all the people he has met – _There was this strange man in this little village…_ they all start – and one day she receives a letter containing only one word: _Sorry_ (the next day she finds out about the siege of Ba Sing Se).

 

8\. thousand

 

She is young and beautiful when she first arrives at court, already knowing what her parents have in mind: both sons are entranced by her guileless smiles and laughs, the selflessness of her happiness.

 

9\. king

 

“You would make a much better Fire Lord,” Ursa remarks one night, head resting against his shoulder, fingers drawing abstract designs on his chest, and he frowns.

 

10\. learn

 

“Don’t play with fire,” he warns early on, “if you don’t want to get burned.”

 

11\. blur

 

The nights she disappears (in another man’s bed, her husband’s arms) he sits and meditates; the candles flicker with his emotions.

 

12\. wait

 

“One day,” she says, lips brushing against his tantalizingly, “we can be together.” - ( _No,_ he bitterly thinks, _we really can’t._ )

 

13\. change

 

It is gradual, nothing overt, but with time her face softens from its warrior façade and her eyes will glow in a different sense, in a maternal sort of way; he finds himself fascinated with her, with the loss of muscle in her body and the softness of her thighs, in the way she whimpers softly, in the way she curls up against him afterwards: “I’m… I’m pregnant.”

 

14\. command

 

Before her marriage and gentling, she had been a warrior, trained in the fighting arts and taught to use her firebending: _her sword slashes through flesh and bone and she can smell charred flesh, the blood of the innocent on her hands…_ is it the right thing to do? She will wonder… but she only does as she is told by the instructor.

 

15\. hold

 

Even though she is a simply a woman in a world ruled by men, Ursa holds some influence over politics in the palace; she had, of course, married the second son of the Fire Lord – but it is simply that the first son has always had a stronger hold over her, and that she regrets not marrying him is left simply unsaid between them.

 

16\. need

 

“Please,” she will beg, breathing against his neck as she smothers it with butterfly kisses, “I need this.”

 

17\. vision

 

_She looks beautiful,_ he muses almost-disappointedly as he watches his brother marry the woman that he had fought against his sibling for; he looks down at his own wife, a woman of higher social standing than Ursa, and from a line of fertile women – looking at the serene woman standing next to Ozai, Iroh feels as if he got the short straw.

 

18\. attention

 

Ozai sends her flowers; Iroh walks up to her, smiles, and asks: “Do you know why they call me the Dragon of the West?”

 

19\. soul

 

Zuko is a replica of him, down to the way he likes his tea (after he has been exiled, he no longer drinks tea) – golden eyes glance up at him, quizzical, and “Where did Lu Ten go, Uncle?” and across the room he can spy a swish of gold-embroidered skirts.

 

20\. picture

 

Though the years have passed, and the paint has fainted, the old portrait kept in an attic still represents the royal family quite well: a serious Iroh, Lu Ten standing near his legs – an almost-smug Ozai, with a gentle Ursa and her two serious children at her feet.

 

21\. fool

 

When Azulon is found dead, Ursa disappears, and he feels a burning deep within his chest: “I would do anything for my son,” she had said.

 

22\. mad

 

Ursa comes to him with a bruise, a nothing of a bruise, soft and purple on her arm, but it is enough that when he spars with his brother he does not hold back.

 

23\. child

 

When Zuko is born, Iroh waits in the sitting room and paces through the screaming of a woman in pain, and he cradles the baby afterwards, gold eyes meeting blurry gold orbs.

 

24\. now

 

He is old and dying and deep inside him he knows there is a want, a desire that he could never fulfill; his face is being smoothed over, the wrinkles softened, and a gentle voice: “Iroh, wake up… it’s time to come home now…”

 

25\. shadow

 

She slips into Iroh’s room in the darkness, sliding doors softly with padded feet making barely any sound on the wooden floors, and she slips into his bed with a soft whisper.

 

26\. goodbye

 

The night is her cover, and she uses it to her advantage as she worms her way into to Iroh’s apartments; her eyes are frightened and determined all at once, and he knows that she comes to him for comfort, but he cannot give any; “I would do anything for my son,” she whispers against his neck, “anything at all.”

 

27\. hide

 

Her affair with her husband’s brother is a secret, but an ill-kept one; Ozai cares not, only that she openly remains his.

 

28\. fortune

 

Her eyes are bright and gold and they glow like fireflies in the night.

 

29\. safe

 

She meditates in the early morning, when no one is awake but she and the early birds, and even the servants are still asleep; golden eyes pensively watch as the flames of the candles waver.

 

30\. ghost

 

At first, Azula reminds him of Ursa, of her kindness and gentleness (but then her father gets to her and she becomes a monster); at last it is Zuko who carries her lingering presence like a shadow in his wake.

 

31\. book

 

Ursa the girl enjoys romances and adventures and whimsical tales that make her smile and laugh and cry as she reads them, curled up in the library on the windowsill with the sun shining in from the window; Ursa the woman enjoys literature and poetry and political treatises that make her ponder and wonder and plot as she reads them, curled up in her room on lonely, rainy days.

 

32\. eye

 

Almost everyone in the Fire Nation has gold eyes, or some variation, but her eyes are different, he notices: near the center there are flecks of silver-white.

 

33\. never

 

“Don’t fall in love with him,” he begs between the drugging kisses that she bestows graciously on his lips, “don’t let him catch you in your spell,” the Dragon of the West pleads with the wife of the to-be Fire Lord; she smiles, without guile in her eyes, and whispers softly into his ear: “I won’t.”

 

34\. sing

 

Ursa feeds the turtle ducks with Zuko, showing him how to be gentle with them, how their fragile bodies are so utterly breakable - she teaches him the soft lullabies and coos that call them to her, and he falls asleep in her arms; with his eyes closed, he looks like Iroh.

 

35\. sudden

 

The announcement of her betrothal comes quickly to the Fire Nation Court, and no one is surprised but Iroh; Ozai is smugly arrogant as he smirks across the room at his brother, and leads away his fiancée with a firm hand (she doesn’t look back, not at all).

 

36\. stop

 

“Don’t do this,” he asks of her as she slips out of his bed for the last time, but she only pauses: “Take care of Zuko.”

 

37\. time

 

When she curls up against him, sated and tired, and the worries are gone from her face, he wishes that they had forever.

 

38\. wash

 

It is monsoon season in the Fire Nation, and when it isn’t raining the heat is smoldering and suffocating, but it rains often so it is bearable enough, he supposes; Ursa welcomes the rain with open arms, letting it run over her body and wash the filth away.

 

39\. torn

 

There are two paths in front of her; she takes neither and makes her own trail, perilous as it is.

 

40\. history

 

Ozai and Iroh had never been friends, had barely been brothers, and had been pitted against each other since birth; her marriage to the younger brother was something that Ozai would never let Iroh forget.

 

41\. power

 

In her hands she holds the life of the Fire Lord, and she watches as he dies, slowly and miserably but without noise – she reminds herself of her cause, and curious golden eyes that will never understand her disappearance.

 

42\. bother

 

When she leaves her husband’s bed, she returns to her quarters and lets her body soak in the lukewarm water of her bath, letting the scent of jasmine wash over her.

 

43\. god

 

“Who are you?” Azulon’s dying voice asks, and she pushes the hair out of his eyes, his slowly dimming eyes, and answers from above: “Your daughter.”

 

44\. wall

 

Iroh enters the room as the maids leave: her hair is prepared for the ceremony, ornately decorated, and her outfit is made for a lady befitting her station – “You look lovely,” he says, and his eyes are guarded, as he had been since his marriage, “Come,” he beckons, and jerks his head towards the hall where her future waits.

 

45\. naked

 

The first time she climbs through his door and into his room, she is wearing nothing but a translucent robe that hides nothing and shows everything; “I love you,” she says.

 

46\. drive

 

Ursa disappears into the mist of the unknown world, and Iroh watches out for Zuko, through his banishment: “The Avatar…” murmurs the broken boy in his sleep, and Iroh hates his brother even more.

 

47\. harm

 

“I am dangerous,” he advises her, “I’m not a hero. I’m not your savior. I’m the Dragon of the West, and I only hurt those around me.”

 

48\. precious

 

Zuko is all he has left of her now, and although he has grown up and grown into his heritage, his eyes and chin are singularly hers.

 

49\. hunger

 

“I love you,” he claims as he burns, as she burns him with her golden eyes and her dark, treacherous touch.

 

50\. believe

 

When Iroh finds Ursa, she has grown older, as he has, wrinkles overtaking her face – she is still beautiful, he reminisces, watching as she stirs in her sleep, in the old temple in which she has taken sanctuary for the past however-many years: “Ursa, wake up. It’s time to come home.”


End file.
